At Foot HQ, Shredder confers with Kitsune. He tells her that ever since Victor took
command of the Savate (a rival ninja crime syndicate operating in New York), he
has proven to be a brazen and coordinated foe to the Foot Clan. Shredder feels now is the time to strike.

Outside the Skara Brae, Casey is keeping tabs on his
father (who is getting loaded), much to Raph’s impatience. As they walk away, they’re ambushed by
several Foot Soldiers. The Foot Soldiers
take them down, tie them up and throw them into separate vans. As Karai discusses her plans to take their
captives to the docks, Raph breaks his bonds and escapes from the van. Karai remarks to herself that all is going
according to plan.

Down in the church lair, Splinter gives Leo a tutorial in
the katsugi men technique while Don shows off his new security system to April. He felt encouraged to up their security ever
since Slash attacked (with Mikey reminding him of Hob and the Mousers’ attack
on the old lair). Raph suddenly arrives
in absolute distress, telling them about the ambush and Casey being taken to
the docks. Leo recognizes it as a trap
and recommends they form a strategy.
Raph wants to go immediately, but before the pair can fight,
Splinter breaks it up and tells them that they will form their strategy on the
way to the harbor.

At the docks, Karai and Alopex are guarding the bound and
gagged Casey. Karai has the entire area
surrounded by Foot Soldiers and expects the trap to be sprung without incident.

April pulls up in her van and the Turtles and Splinter
deploy (with April staying behind to man the getaway vehicle). As they exit the van, Angel (finishing her
shift at the Skara Brae) catches a glimpse of them. Splinter, Raph and Leo take a vantage point
on the rooftops while Mike and Don swim around and prepare to make a surprise
attack via the water. Surprises are
indeed in store, though, as the Shredder enters the scene and approaches Casey.

Back at the van, Angel asks April what’s going on. Angel gets the story and rushes to the docks
to help save Casey.

Shredder calls out Splinter, warning him what will happen
if he remains hidden. Not in the mood to
waste time, Shredder stabs Casey in the stomach with his gauntlet. Raph explodes in a rage and attacks (Splinter
and Leo following behind). All the Foot
Soldiers leap from their positions and a massive brawl ensues. Mike and Don climb from the water and try to
get to Casey, but they’re blocked by the Shredder. As Raph and Splinter deal with the Foot
Soldiers, Leo is tackled by Alopex.
Angel manages to sneak in and drag Casey away from the action. Seeing this, Splinter calls for his sons to
retreat. Shredder allows Don and Mikey
to escape, but as Leo makes a break for it, Karai tags him in the back of the
neck with a poison dart. The Foot then
grab Leo and disappear with him.

As Angel loads Casey into the van and Splinter insists
they get him to a hospital immediately, Don notices that Leo is missing.

*On page 8, Mike can be seen reading a copy of After the
Fire, a comic by Tom Waltz and Guiu Vilanova.

*The TMNT: Deviations #1 one-shot tells an alternate universe story spinning out of this issue's events.

*This issue was originally published with 5 variant
covers: Cover A by Santolouco, Cover B by Eastman and Pattison, Cover RIA by
Declan Shalvey and Nolan Wooward, Cover RIB by Eastman, and Cover RE Phantom Exclusive
by Rich Woodall.

Review:

Editor Bobby Curnow needs to nail Santolouco’s feet to
the floor so he can’t run away. That guy
must stay on this book for a good long while. To put it mildly: He’s incredible.

But before I embarrass myself by gushing over Santolouco’s
art for the bazillionth time, let me address the story.

After the prologue last issue, “City Fall” gets its
proper start here (and I think it’s the first issue of the ongoing to actually
be titled within the pages). If “Krang
War” was the payoff for all the outer space stuff that has been going on in
this book since it began, then “City Fall” by all indicators looks to be the
payoff for everything else. Just look at
those Turtle Tips up there. Waltz is
pulling in plot points from basically every arc and major micro/mini series
since he started this book. I admit, the
onslaught of story points coming to fruition might be a little rough on
newcomers, but those of us who have been reading (and paying attention) since
the beginning are getting our much anticipated reward.

But that’s not to dismiss “City Fall” as impenetrable to
the uninitiated, either. In fact, it
strikes me as a pretty good jumping-on point in its own way. There’s enough exposition (some graceful,
some not so much) in here to keep first timers from being too confused and even
if they don’t follow all at once, hey, the art and action is incredible! So there’s that to keep you entertained,
whether you get all the references or not.

Heck, when I was a kid, there was no such thing as a “jumping
on point”; that seems to be a more modern invention. If you woke up one Wednesday and decided you
wanted to read X-Men, you grabbed the first issue you could find off the rack at 7-11
and figured it out from there (and we didn’t even have the internet to help us
out, dagnabbit!). I started reading
Spider-Man during the Clone Saga. The Clone Saga. If I
can make it through that, I figure most folks can deal with the multitude of
colliding story arcs in “City Fall”.

If you look back at my earlier reviews from around the
first year of the series, a lingering criticism I had was that important
enemies, when first encountering the Turtles, tended to go down rather
easy. Leo fought off an army of Foot
Soldiers singlehandedly in their first encounter. When the Turtles and the Shredder first threw
down, they used the magic of teamwork to beat him in two pages. When the Savate ninja gang finally got a
major spotlight, they were played more for comedy than as a threat. I think “Blood Brothers” marked the real
beginning of threats that truly challenged the Turtles and tested their mettle,
with “Krang War” and “Secret History of the Foot Clan” only increasing the
difficulty from there.

“City Fall”, going just by this first issue, may redeem
some of those enemies who might have fallen short of expectations on their
first go-around with the TMNT. The Foot
Soldiers, previously introduced as cannon fodder, take out Casey and Raph with
a rather small unit. The Savate, who
were sort of the butt of jokes when we last saw them, are now a thorn in the
Foot Clan’s side. Then there’s the
Shredder, using the loved ones of Yoshi’s children just to draw his enemy
out. What I appreciate most about that scene isn’t
the violence but how it ties into Shredder’s words at the start of the
issue. He is through with patience and
biding. He called to Yoshi once. Yoshi didn’t respond. So Shredder straight up stabbed Casey. He’s not screwing around or playing games
(like at the start of the series when he masqueraded as a Foot
Soldier to test Leo). He’s ready to put it
all on the table.

And speaking of Casey’s stabbing, it was a moment that made me grateful for the “PG-13” nature of this book.
The focus isn’t on the gore or what have you, but on the action-itself
and what it represents. Not just the
suspense regarding Casey’s survival, but everything I mentioned above about Shredder
having zero patience for playing games. If
Santolouco had drawn Shredder pulling out Casey’s organs and a massive pool of
blood and gore, it would have distracted from the other purpose of that scene,
putting too much emphasis on the injury.
It was done “tastefully” and was more than just violence for violence’s
sake, at least from my perspective (it wasn’t meaningless and gratuitous, is what
I’m saying).

There’s a great sense of suspense, confusion and tension
building up over the course of this issue.
It begins with the conflict of wanting to rescue Casey, but needing time to think things through. When Shredder calls Yoshi out, they try to take time to weigh their options and that backfires horribly. By the end, Casey is
dying, Leo is missing and our heroes are left with a very limited window of opportunity
to figure out what to do next. There's essentially a singular dilemma in this issue, only gradually dialed up one notch at a time until the cliffhanger.

I said at the start of the review that I would gush about
Santolouco’s art, but I think I did enough of that during my review for “Secret
History of the Foot Clan”. I’ll just
settle on saying that this work is as excellent as “Secret History” and I
really hope IDW keeps him on past “City Fall”.

We’re getting off to a great start, here.

Grade: A (as in, “Angel looks, like, 7 years older than
when we last saw her, though”.)

3 comments:

Can't deny that I too am a sucker for Santolouco's art through and through. And I'm sure that it had to be a hell of a job rendering "the city made of light" view from the Foot HQ's balcony, but I must say I was a bit disappointed to see it entirely recycled from the last page of Secret History #4.Well, at least it helps draw comparison between Vieira and Pattison's work - to limited extent. :)